Exploring ethics

For my final year Extended Essay I have decided to explore the question of "What are the ethical concerns surrounding photojournalism with the introduction of Social Media?".

The reason I decided this is because of 2 main motivations:

1. I have always been interested in Ethics surrounding the world of photography, looking at different rules and laws.
2. Photojournalism is something that I am looking to move forward with in the future and looking at working for publications so I figured I could start by exploring the subject.

During my time researching I came across an article named "The Public Eye or Disaster Tourists" created by Stuart Allan and Chris Peters which contributes to the discussion surrounding professional–amateur interactions in photojournalism by reporting on findings from a study that with members of a demographic described as “millennial” users.

By the end of the article, Allan and Peters discuss how professional photojournalism’s long authority is shown to be open to challenge by the alternative feeling of citizen imagery, with respondents’ views raising questions over the realness, authenticity and familiar professional–amateur photojournalists images.

After reading that article and looking at the different studies that they conducted, I decided to include the question of social media when exploring the Ethics of Photojournalism as the world of social media is still very new but is having sucha massive impact on everything around the world.